Former UP chief secretary Neera Yadav gets bail

Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court has granted bail to former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Neera Yadav who was recently sentenced to three years` imprisonment by a special CBI court in a Noida land scam case.

In an order on December 05, Justice Mohd Tahir ruled that Yadav be released on bail "during the pendency of the appeal on her furnishing a personal bond and two sureties each of the like amount to the satisfaction of the court concerned".

The 1971 batch IAS officer, who retired from service in 2008, had moved the court with an application under Section 374 of the Criminal Procedure Code whereby she had challenged the order of the CBI court at Ghaziabad of November 20.

Admitting her application and granting her prayer for bail, the High Court summoned the lower court records with the direction that the appeal be listed for hearing "in due course".

Yadav had been charged with having allotted prime land to politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen close to her in the 1990s, when she was the Chairman and CEO of Noida, in violation of norms.

She was made the chief secretary by the then chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2005, notwithstanding the CBI inquiry pending against her, which evoked an outcry.

Later, a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court led to her removal from the top post.